Sunnydale Shuffle
by Rusco
Summary: Who could walk over the mouth of hell and remain unchanged? Life and unlife in the 'dale.
1. Sunnydale Shuffle

"_There's something about Sunnydale…"_

This is always where he stops; the paper is destroyed, crumpled or torn or dropped to the floor in a pile of writhing ashes after hours of frenetic scribbling and violent corrections that tear through the paper. Spike remains a wordsmith at heart, remembers the terrible power of the right words, the power to change the way the world spins- even if it's only one person's world- remembers the terrible pain they can inflict on both mortal and immortal man. He has spent a century trying to capture the ages on paper, practiced writing his anger and joy and despair and bright, violent life. His poetry is no longer bloody awful, full of fire and ashes and forbidden things that he can release safely onto paper, to draw the longing away from his mind and body. Never again will he make the mistake of sharing his written words with the world, but they remain a part of him, part of both the demon and the man. The need for catharsis draws him to sit down again and again, put the bent Bic pen to the yellowed pages of the journal lifted in Italy half a century before, try to cleanse himself of the infection he knows is taking root.

He tries, but he never succeeds- not with this. William the Bloody has no words that can capture the Hellmouth. Not anymore.

What similes, what metaphors are available? He thinks sometimes that the town is like an enormous carnivorous plant, a creature of B-rated horror flicks with leafy tentacles that wrap around our intrepid heroes and drag them slowly, horribly, into its distended stomach. He thinks it is like an overripe confectionary, sugared and sick- the sweet Sunnydalers refusing to look beneath the pretty little town's crystallized icing, unwilling to see the rot they can smell below them. He thinks it is like dark, beautiful Drusilla, wonders if the world here is not shaped by some mad, malicious intelligence that plays with lives like dolls, setting the slayer and the vampires together on tiny chairs to sip invisible tea. It is all of these things, it is none of them, not a dead place but somehow a living creature that could rise on earthy legs at any moment and stalk away with the town on its back, like the ancient cities of legend built on the backs of giant sea turtles. It has caught him, somehow. He feels it through his feet, in his blood, knows he will never really be free of it, never bothers to run. There is SOMETHING, he knows it, something that twists him inside and out like this, something, there is...

There's something about Sunnydale.

Something that draws you to it, calls you back. Young parents were often lured by the comparatively low rent, the beautiful scenery and apparently quiet neighborhood. The perfect place for a beginning, for something new. There's something in the air that speaks to the heart, makes people believe for a moment that in Sunnydale, anything is possible.

That in Sunnydale, dreams really can come true.

Spike remembers some of his dreams, as a little child with dishwater blond curls, screaming his throat raw against the darkness and the things beyond…

He knows by now that the rules are different on the Hellmouth, where the world bends under the weight of a hundred different realities. Paper thin walls hold the dimensions apart, tearing under the pressure in a thousand tiny places, warping inwards. The laws of probability are revoked, water flows backwards, vampires love slayers, dead men work the night shift. Life and death are re-defined, distorted with terms like 'unlife' and 'undead' that bring the two extremes too close together for anyone's comfort. The magical fields are polluted by waves of shimmering darkness that cling to the soul like an oil slick, staining everything they wash over. Strange energies jump from world to world like bolts of lightning, looking for anything to ground them- a careless curse, a forgotten promise, the last wisp of a dark dream that suddenly becomes prophetic. No mortal or demon can pass through the storm unchanged, or unmarked. It devours lives, it feeds on fear, it engenders loathing- and yet, there's something…

There's something about Sunnydale that shackles him to it, something that won't let go. He can feel its heartbeat in his blood, slow and deep and so far away. It is Spike's nature to fight, to struggle against the clinging restraints put upon him by this strange and dying place, though he knows already that he's going to lose. He has become an unwilling actor in the grand drama playing out before him, and now that the game has begun he cannot move outside the rules. He is bound by love and hatred and the exciting rush of melodrama, addictive extremes of emotion that trap new pawns and rip through the vampire like a powerful drug. Spike wonders, now, if he wasn't already caught before he fled with Drusilla to Brazil. He wonders if it wasn't the subtle pull of the Hellmouth that brought him back when he should have escaped, should have run free before it became too late.

It is too late for sweet William now, though he still tries this one last thing. It is too late for him to purge himself of Sunnydale's special brand of poison, to let it seep from his demon heart harmlessly onto the blotched paper in front of him. He tries, when the walls begin to close in on him. When he's drunk enough to remember that he shouldn't be this way, when he mutters 'bloody hell's and 'sodding slayer's to the empty air at night and takes out the paper and pen in an act of defiance. He tries, but it has him now- there are no words left for him to fight with. He stares for hours at the empty book, pressing the pen to paper hard enough to tear. It sticks in his mind, the only line he knows anymore, the only way he can ever begin and end, since there is now nothing more he can say.

It isn't enough.

"_There's something about Sunnydale…"_

((A/N: Unbeta'd strangeness, slightly stream-of-consciousness. Grammar is suspended in places in favor of intensity, I apologize for any inconvenience caused. I know it's weird, and I'm tired, but this series of short stories has kind of been rattling around in my head for a while now. Both the show and a lot of the fics hint that there is more to the Hellmouth than just a random dimensional gate, and I wonder how the- mystical fallout, if you will, affects the residents. Will probably write two or three of these, though possibly slightly different types of stories. The kinds with dialogue, and stuff. ;

Any type of feedback is loved, I'm a pretty new author and, as I said, writing unbeta'd. Thank you!))


	2. Stray Dog Strut

((Um. This collection? It's really a kind of run-off for my creepy rambling days. So this is kind of creepy, and rambling, and I didn't really know how to end it, and it's also a little AU because it was actually Tara who suggested getting Miss Kitty Fantastico, but I wrote this a few months ago, before I saw the episode. I recall being somewhat delirious with lack of sleep while writing this… Comments are appreciated still. If I haven't scared you off.))

_Stray Dog Strut_

They had talked about it together for a while before deciding to bring home the cat; a house pet to make the dorm room feel more like home for two new lovers. Surprisingly, it had been Tara who had wanted to consider getting a dog instead. She had grown up between two farm dogs, still remembered how their fur had felt twisted between her tiny fingers. Dogs were strong and gentle and _protection_ in a place where both gentleness and protection had been in short supply. Willow had smiled convincingly as she considered it, but then wrinkled her brow in apparent distress as she considered aloud the practicality of a dog into their small home.

"Where will it have room to run?"

"Won't its claws scratch up the floor?"

"Dogs are, you know, kind of loud. I-in a nice, friendly way, but maybe for the neighbors- no so nice. They'd tell on us."

In the end, Tara reluctantly agreed, and the next day Miss Kitty Fantastico found a new home.

Willow was very careful not to show her relief. She had never liked dogs, for some reason.

xxxx

Wild dogs had always been a problem in Sunnydale, or at least for as long as Willow could remember. Every so often a child would disappear from school in the middle of a term, and when Willow asked the teacher where they'd gone, the teachers would make strange tight faces and not answer. This meant, all the children knew, that the missing one had been eaten by the wild dogs. The grownups wouldn't talk about it, but the knowledge had trickled down; somebody's brother told somebody's sister, told…

Willow's mother always told her to stay away from strange dogs, especially if she was out after dark. Jesse and Xander's mothers did not, so Willow had passed on this piece of wisdom over cups of imaginary tea while the trio was playing "humor the girl".

"'Cause the dogs will eat you up, and de-vower you," Willow warned gravely, "just like what happened to Amanda." Xander's eyes had widened with awe and fear like only a six-year-old's can, but Jesse had laughed. This caused Willow to throw her cup at him in a fit of pique, and the afternoon ended with two boys baying like giggling wolves under a tree from which a stranded Willow angrily assured Jesse that he'd be the first one to get ate, just wait and see!

Willow had strange, cold dreams that night, dreams of wild wolves with the faces of people who darted out of the deepest shadows to spear passers-by with ivory forks and knives. They pulled Jesse into the shadows, and soon the Jesse-wolf emerged in his place. It stalked her until she woke up screaming, though all that lingered of the dream by morning was the prickling fear of being prey.

Sometimes, she met people that reminded her of dogs in some strange way she couldn't pinpoint- of the dream dogs from her childhood nightmare, creeping, stalking. Xander could sense them better than she, and Jesse knew enough by then to trust their instincts. A woman on the street would linger a second too long, and the _prey_ fear would spark up her spine. Xander would jerk away as if burned, and for the rest of the evening they sat inside at the Rosenberg's house drinking sugarless soda and watching edu-tainment television under her mother's watchful eyes.

Eventually the three of them grew up, and grew wiser. Xander remained the youngest at heart, still jumping at shadows and the predatory people that Willow had learned to ignore. She learned too that it wasn't right for girls to cringe from cuddy puppies and cute little dogs, so she cooed loud enough to drown out the faint hum of panic in the pit of her stomach. Don't remember the whispers, Wills, the rumors of the teeth-marks on little Amanda's throat, little puppy teeth that nip and nibble and tear…Jesse laughed at all their fears, just like he always had- he was the one who jogged through Sunnydale after dark and walked on the shadowy side of the street, things no one else born in this town was brave enough to do. Bright, fearless Jesse dared them to grow up. Grown-ups didn't worry about wild dogs or strange bite-marks, at least not in Sunnydale. Memories of long-ago dreams faded, leaving only a faint sense of unease that nearly disappeared with the passing of puberty.

But some things run deeper than memories, and on warm autumn nights when the window was just a little open, and the neighbor's dog was howling with the edge of a wildness almost forgotten in its cries, Willow would shiver, just a little. She would close the window, and remember for a moment that as a kid, she'd never really liked dogs… for some reason.


End file.
